Freelance writer back on the edge ready to jump!

Tag Archives: NaNowriMo

Our Archive is open for the final time this weekend. Find articles, workshops. reviews, Interviews and writing to keep you busy for the next few hours before the exciting launch of the final WPL issue of Contour Poetry Magazine.

From 2014 our Guest Writer William Gallagher talks to us about Making Time to Write.

WOW – Pitstop… NaNoWriMo reaches the half-way point, which I could hardly believe when I logged on to update my word count… YES I have been writing, well catch up writing (but that’s okay, especially with NaNoWriMo).

As I am following Nancy’s blog prompts and attempting to spend the month writing flash fiction, I am not planning on reaching 50,000 but what I can tell you is with all the catch up writing I have smashed through 10,000 – which I celebrated. I remember from 2013 that once you smash that barrier the word count tends to follow and for a while (despite only adding 100 words or so) the number increases drastically across the 100 boundaries. Until your brain leaks the thought of 20,000 words – you feel good for a while.

Last week I thought I might have to cheat further by writing poems not prose, but I am enjoying the Flash challenge and am creating stories that wouldn’t have existed. I am also making these challenges work for me a bit and finding time to research and build up my post NaNo resources – you have to have something to get on with straight afterwards. Keep busy.

Week 2 of NaNoWriMo – Flash Nano

Day 7 – was finally written, an interesting futuristic tale that I think has legs and might become a longer work of fiction some day. It surprised me, even after I had the basic concept of a society that needed more focus on rest and health (and let’s face it our world is mad for busy) – there is a great growing entity behind this story that I would like to explore further. I can feel a Christmas Holiday writing project coming on.

Day 8 – my story was fairly short, but again re-reading it I found some magic moments that I may be able to copy and paste into a story at some point in the future. I wrote this story behind the schedule and it made me glad that I had such an interesting day at work.

Wow, Nancy – you made me happy to be at work!?

Day 9 – This was a great prompt and it could have gone anywhere, in fact at one point I thought it might. I have written all the ideas down for future reference. It also inspired me to create an activity for my writing class and the resulting letter has some dark humour in it. It pleases me when I manage to write something funny, a good change from the serious.

Day 10 – was another prompt that nearly flew to thinking outside the box and again I have a stream of ideas to tackle another time. In the end I based this on a miraculously true story and had fun researching meanings for Italian names. I included bright nobility, which sums up the protagonist well, strength and keeper of time. The ending was left open, but I know what happens.

Day 11 – Again I think this story may need more work, I think it would appeal to the YA market, a market I haven’t considered before. Again, there are touches of humour found in the relationship between the father and his daughter.

Day 12 – has left most of with our jaws on the floor and I have only had time to scaffold my effort. Very 80s and worth being part of Flash Nano for this prompt alone.

Day 13 – was one I enjoyed (although it hasn’t helped the Nano count at just 13 words) but it was fun to edit and re-edit. I changed the story idea twice too, I am happy with the final result.

I also played catch up with the Day 6 challenge – the 100 word story. I wanted to write 150 words so I could submit it and I did just that (well 149). I will keep you posted on this one.

I look forward to the next week of prompts.

NaNoWriMo

I collected a few more award buttons and have 13 stories and 11,548words so far

FLASH NANO has been going well, it makes a change for me to write prose and Nancy’s prompts have been inspiring, these tales would never exist without this challenge. I have started to think about how these prompts can be used, rather than just collecting stories that will just gather dust in my hard-drive.

So here’s what has been happening since Day 2.

Day 3 Monologue.

I created a character who was fighting the setting in of age (we had to write a monologue), this flash had feet and I think I can rework it and use it in the future. The central character not only bears witness to something but suspects she knows the culprit.

Day 4 Fire.

I read an Australian traditional tale about a crocodile and reshaped it into something a little different. The crocodile needed help with his drilling of sticks to make fire and the clever lizard invents fire sticks. It takes a while before the crocodile can make a fire that stays alight and the animal who helps him is one he has never eaten to this day.

It was fun writing this tale and may work well as a story for children.

Day 5 A childhood toy.

I knew instantly which toy I was going to write about and parts of this Flash were based on a real-life experience. The ending took me by surprise (I love it when writing does that) and it works well as a story for a variety of markets.

Day 6 A 100 word story.

This is still to be written (see my TOP TIPS) but I have researched where I may be able to place a short flash and have decided to make it 150 words so I can potentially submit it.

Day 7 Writing about the seventh day, the day of rest.

I still need to tackle this. I haven’t thought about it yet.

I do not panic about falling behind because these challenges are under 1000 words and the average recommended daily allowance is 1667 words a day for the 50K challenge, which is not something I am trying to achieve this year. I have extended some of the original flashes into short stories and so far have written 8242words.

So how is Nanowrimo going for you? Do share your updates with us. Here are some tips to keep you in the write frame of mind now that you are a week in.

TOP TIPS

Forgive yourself if you haven’t written daily, some days are busy. I haven’t managed to write daily, but I do check the prompts daily and scribble some rough outline notes. This means that when I get time to sit and catch up I am not trying to create the story from scratch.

Check prompts daily (even if you don’t write)

Make some notes of plot/ideas (for another time)

Sit down and make up the word count as soon as you possibly can. Even if you haven’t time to finish the whole piece.

Research – I use google to search keywords and generate ideas, or to make sure there is historical/ factual accuracy in my stories.

Purpose – Rather than just writing try to give your NANO writing purpose, research possible markets for submission, mark the best ideas and don’t forget to make note of any ideas that come out of the writing.

Good luck and keep writing!

PS today is the day for Double donations and a double writing challenge. Double up your word count, a great idea if you are doing Nanowrimo because all extra words under your belt count.

It is also the first official Nano write in for my regional group, I attended back in 2013 when doing Nano for the first time. Check out your regional groups, a write in is fun and motivating, not to mention sociable.

This year I am working on writing projects already and know I haven’t time to write 50,000 words, so I was delighted when I discovered Nancy Stohlmn was posting daily prompts for 30 Flash Nano pieces, flash fiction being prose under 1000 words and a genre I have a better time with than short story writing.

As far as NaNo rules go this unplanned approach means I am a – but being a panster when you’re not planning to reach 50,000 words is fine by me. Plus with Nancy’s prompts I am not a total panster, there is at least a daily starting point.

Day 1

Nancy’s first prompt was a hard write for me, it was based on a real-life story (not my own), maybe that was one of the reasons it was difficult, or maybe it was the challenge of setting a story in just one setting. There was no dialogue to move the story forward.

I managed a complete flash fiction of 969 words. One of the character’s talked about was called Nancy and I have only just realised the connection in writing this blogpost.

Day 2

This story was much easier to write, maybe because I sat down with a cup of coffee.

I did some micro research to manage the technical vocabulary I needed and this flash actually turned into a short story of 1414 words, which I am not going to worry about. In order to use the flash fiction stories in the future they may have to be extended into short stories.

I have also noted 3 fresh ideas that have spawned from writing the flashes.

I did NaNoWriMo in 2013, the year I started writing again, the year I started blogging. I completed the Spring and Summer Camps as well as the main event.

This year I thought about dipping my toes in again, but I am working on several poetry projects and know that I don’t have time to complete 50,000 words. Tonight I decided to spend some time browsing my reader as it has been 10 months since I looked at blogs out here. I discovered a post and a challenge that might match my schedule and give me more to work with in the future.

I headed over to http://nanowrimo.org and signed back in. I headed to the Pep Talk page which has a lot of good advice and encouragement for a positive mental attitude, which believe me all NaNo-ers need! See what Gene Luen Yang has to say here

I am unlikely to reach the 50,000 word count by writing incredibly short, short stories but I will hopefully end the month with 30 new pieces and if I can I might mix it up with some poetry too.

I am still undecided on whether I am attempting NaNoWriMo 2014 or not yet, if I do it will be to work on short stories, several of them.

In 2013, when I started writing again, I discovered NaNo in early Spring and was gutted I had to wait until Autumn. I took part in both the Camp NaNoWriMo Spring and Summer – produced 50K on a non-fiction book which is writing in progress and currently somewhere beyond 90K words, I worked on a series of short stories for the summer camp, by the real event in November I was primed and ready and created half a novel that I haven’t touched it since.

What I did do successfully, was blog. Just in case you know nothing of this month of madness have a look HERE

Here are links to archive posts for any of you considering locking yourself in for November and writing until your head hurts!

I have finally managed to get the blog up to date! I have another busy week coming up.

There are a couple of events in Birmingham this week which I may attend, depending on energy levels. On Friday I am performing at Word Up at York’s Bakery. It is also my final week off work and I need to catch up with NaPoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo, there are some future submissions I need to work towards. I also need to prepare for my 1st ever slam.

Last year I took part in the Spring and Summer camps for NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month – the main event takes place in November. I successfully completed all 3 challenges and have over 100,000 of writing I have done nothing with since.Whereas I wrote a poem a day, some from prompts some from my muse. I am DEFINITELY signing up for NaPoWriMo but have decided that for NaNoWriMo it will only be to write a couple of short stories so my monthly target will be 4000 words as opposed to 50,000! I think the minimum is 10,000 but have read that this year they have extended genres and they mention Haikus… I wrote 21 Haikus last Wednesday and even that many poems don’t have many words.

People can sign up already for the NaNoWriMo Spring Camp which starts on the 1st April.
I have collected shiny new badges to display hereThere are also tips to help you plan. I have been both a planner/prepper and a pantster (someone who approaches the target word count without a plan, thought or direction!)

Cabin sign ups start on March 25th.

How many of you are going to challenge yourself to camp this April?

I have submitted the site to appear on the participants list on NaPoWriMo and am fully ready to take part with a daily poetry challenge. As with last year (due to copyright issues) I won’t post an entire poem here throughout April, I post extracts and blog about the prompts and experience.

Seeking motivation? Need to keep your word count progression steady? Got a close deadline?
When writers participate in Nanowrimo one of the tools most of us get a little kick out of is the WORD COUNT graph where we can clearly see our progress.

I have discovered a great motivating tool!
I tend to write poetry and short stories so this tool isn’t as essential for me as those of you writing longer pieces but it is something I plan to use in 2014!
Click here to find out more and start using the tool.

I cannot believe it is already the end of November – it only seems a minute since the 1st… guess life goes fast when you are writing for NaNoWriMo… so how did the rest of the month pan out?

Submissions: 0

I really need to get back onto the action plan and send work out but this month has been all about writing and performing.

Blog:

Following INKSPILL we had a surge of new followers and the Short Stories Writing Tips post continues to be the most popular on the blog, visited and read by over 20 people a day!

I had a secret wish in April – regarding the number of people who would be following AWF by the end of the year and we are so close. I hope we make it!

Followers 533

Challenges:

I was attempting 3 writing challenges this month; NaNoWriMo, Writers Digest PAD challenge (poems) and PiBoWriMo (Picture books) I only managed to complete 1, Nanowrimo win and now have half a novel (51,370 words) to work on next year or possibly reproduce in a collection of short stories and or poems.